Boyd and Sandy Smith in Tandem at the Grand River Canoe and Kayak Festival, Ontario, Canada

It was our maiden voyage in our new W500 kayak. The occasion was the “Day of 1000 Canoes”. We never did get a chance to practice solo or tandem with the W500 before the Caledonia Canoe & Kayak Festival today, but everything worked out well. We paddled 20 km down the Grand River from Caledonia to Cayuga. Boyd and Sandy

7 Comments

Boyd, Sandy, thank you for this great story! When Boyd emailed me that you guys were planning to take your W500 on a 20 km trip in tandem on its maiden voyage, I got a bit concerned 🙂 … Just for the record, and for the benefit of those who plan to paddle their W500 in tandem: Tandem paddling is considered an ‘advanced’ application as far as kayaks are concerned. Both paddlers have to be well acquainted with paddling it solo, before venturing into tandem paddling, or they could face some difficulties in handling the boat… Remember – kayaks are not canoes, which are basically tandem boats, and therefore harder to paddle solo.

Knucklewalker06/26/2011 at --

What an adventure, wow! Congratulations on your W maiden voyage, which you chose to have under such special circumstances 😉 KW

Marco06/26/2011 at --

With a thousand canoes and kayaks floating down that river and scaring the fish, I guess taking your fishing tackle on board would have been a waste of both space and time 😀 Great pictures! Marco

April L06/26/2011 at --

Thank you for this report! It was fun to read. I wish there were more kayaking related posts such as this one on the Wavewalk blog 🙂

Boyd and Sandy Smith06/26/2011 at --

For those who would like to attend the Caledonia Canoe and Kayak Festival, this is an annual event held on the last Saturday of each June. All self propelled water craft are welcome. More info available on http://www.1000canoes.com

CJ06/26/2011 at --

This looks like a great initiative, and without all the commercial stuff that you usually find in such events. Reading the official Canadian regulations on “Human-powered pleasure craft”, I wondered if most sit-in and sit on-top kayaks would qualify as such, after you paddle or pedal them for more than an hour, and your yak-back increasingly reminds you how fragile we all are… 😀 CJ